Thursday, May 08, 2008

Will it fly?

Thank Goodness It's Thursday!! The science fair projects have been turned in, the learning walk is over, and Lost comes on in a couple of minutes.

Speaking of the science projects, my afternoon class tackled the problem of Will a Paper Airplane Fly Farther with a Paper Clip or without? We spent days making a hypothesis, coming up with a list of materials, going over the steps of the procedure, and making our data table. Oh yeah, and making quite a few paper airplanes as well. Several times when I asked kids for their hypothesis, I had to gently remind them to include the word "farther" because they kept telling me that they thought a paper airplane would fly with a paper clip. Yeah, it will fly without one too, but we're trying to see which will go FARTHER.

Then came actually performing the experiment. The procedure included standing behind a line on the floor, tossing the paper airplane, and then measuring the distance from the line on the floor to the spot where the airplane landed. Of course, much like their large steel counterparts, paper airplanes tend to skid along the floor after they land. Since we wanted the distance that the paper airplane actually FLEW, it was necessary to quickly mark the spot where the airplane first hit the ground.

Each time we threw the paper airplane, I asked a different child to tell us where the plane had landed by stepping on that spot. Then two other kids would get to use the tape measure to see the distance between the starting spot and that child's foot. I soon found myself doing my own science experiment inside my head -- What Is the Average Distance between the Spot Where the Airplane Actually Landed and Where the Child Puts His/Her Foot?

I figure the answer was about a foot and a half.

At any rate, it's finally over, like I said. Judging is tomorrow, so we'll see how the kids did. At least I know they did better than that second grade project titled Which Tastes Better -- Dog Food or Cat Food?